The beautiful cover by Marco Hassman (who also draws for Disney) takes us into the colourful but dangerous world created by Bloody Mary, an Italian band now at its second full-length after the debut "Blood'N'Roll" and the mini-album "Dig Up For The Party", which already partly anticipated the sound of the new record at hand. The narrative begins after the events told in the first record, takes up its themes, and is set around the Second World War: almost a kind of science fiction seasoned with crazy scientists, cemeteries and the by now inevitable vampires.
The twelve songs on the CD, however, and fortunately, do not limit themselves to being a mere soundtrack to what Aldebran's lyrics stage; they clearly, and most of the time pleasantly, betray the members' love for eighties pop and the dark wave of Fields Of The Nephilim, but also for HIM's love metal and the more expressive visions of Moonspell and Anathema.
There is hard rock on the opener "Velvet", but also the classic keyboard sounds of the Nordic bands, while "Better Down" shines with the light of the Sisters Of Mercy, and the beautiful "Sobibor" is as simple and predictable as it is well arranged vocally, and stubborn in never leaving your head.
Great care has gone into making every single chorus as memorable as possible, and Aldebran's performance and the execution of the backing vocals are excellent (even if a little more could have been got out of the production). A point against, on the other hand, is the excessive uniformity that runs through many of the songs on the record, with the last two, "Deathly Gone" and "The Reason", really adding nothing to the rest.
The rendition of "Pet Sematary" from the Ramones' repertoire, too, although well done, is too much in line with the rest of the material - though for some this may even be a virtue.
The night seems to be over with "The Right Way", which radically changes the atmosphere of the album, veering towards sunnier climates, but it is only a glimmer, countered by the gloomy "Somebody To Love", mindful of the lesson of mid-career 69 Eyes. Another positive song is "Before You Fade", as martial as it is fluid thanks to a few harmonies borrowed from English new prog.
At various points in the work, Bloody Mary come close to some things done by Long Distance Calling and Jimmy Eat World, albeit along completely different roads, with the result of uniting all the inputs mentioned to create a worthwhile record that grows with each listen and that, while needing to improve a few details (production, English pronunciation formally good but not native, the specific weight of some compositions), will place very well in the charts of the many goth-wave and electro-metal fans scattered across the peninsula.
First published in Italian; in English here. Where it appeared ↗